A bibliometric analysis of research trends in multilingualism in English medium instruction: towards translanguaging turn

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study aims to provide a bibliometric analysis of the status of multilingualism in EMI research, research topics on multilingualism in EMI and future research directions. Based on a sample of 175 articles from Web of Science (WoS), the results show that (1) multilingualism in EMI research has been gradually growing since 2000 and it comes to a phase of fast growth since 2019; (2) journals such as, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Current Issues in Language Planning, Language and Education, and System are essential for publications of the multilingualism in EMI research; (3) Kevin W. H. Tai, Li Wei, Aintzane Doiz, David Lasgabaster, Pramod Kumar Sah and Prem Phyak are relatively productive authors with high impact on published works, and Tae-Hee Choi and Fan Fang are worth attention considering the authors' different career lengths; (4) highly cited documents discuss research topics from macro-, meso- and micro-levels; (5) the hot topics and themes are translanguaging, English medium instruction, education, code-switching, teacher education, code-switching, multilingualism, higher education, EMI and language; (6) translanguaging and language policy are the most potential research trends and the connotation of EMI will be further expanded.